Chapter 1 · Practice 2 of 4
Match the chart type to the relationship you want to show
Why it matters
Most messages fall into a handful of relationships, each with a natural chart:
| Relationship | Usually best |
|---|---|
| Compare categories or rank them | Bar chart, sorted; dot plot |
| Change over time | Line chart |
| Distribution | Histogram, box plot |
| Relationship between two measures | Scatter plot |
| Part of a whole | Stacked bar; pie only in narrow cases |
| Exact values people will look up | A table |
The Analysis Function recommends a line chart rather than bars when there is more than one time series, and suggests a dot plot as an alternative to a bar chart when the values do not sit near zero. When readers need precise numbers rather than a pattern, a well-formatted table beats any chart.